Hi Friends Hope your all well just been having a look at some treats for Ziva came across Fish treats & cubes ( fish skins) now nutritional Info is Fish treats Crude Protein 30% Crude oil & fats 13.5% Fish cubes ​Crude protein 87.8% Fat 2.56% Are these good healthy treats or are they high in protein and fat or are they natural fats if this makes sense
I use the treats you are talking about as high value treats as my girl loves fish. In my mind they are healthy but I'm no expert. Depending on the training I'm doing depends on the treats. For example something like a sit I'd use a biscuit. Anything fish related I'd use for a difficult recall or heel work. For example I was trying to get Mabel to heel on a loose lead the other day while a collie chased a ball. She succeeded very well. A very demanding peice of training for her, as a reward she had the smelliest sardines ever. I also cook a lot of fresh chicken, fish and duck as training treats. For me it's everything in moderation. Her weight is good, beautiful white teeth and a beautiful shiny coat so I feel I'm doing the right thing.
Thanks Pilatelover It's more the nutritional side I'm interested in as at moment since Ziva turned 6 months she kinds little plump but not grown ( well 1 inch in a month) but is at 23kilo she quite small bitch but Vets and friends say she little to heavy so wondered if these were good. Marie & Ziva
Well, protein and carbohydrates contain roughly 4 calories per gram. Fats contain roughly 9 calories per gram. With that information, plus the weight of the food, you can work out how many calories there are in each treat. The type of fat is largely irrelevant; the only "bad fat" these days is considered to be trans fats, everything else is fine in moderation. Moderation being the key, because what you need to be looking at is her overall diet, not just her treats. If she is a little rotund, then you need to look at giving her a calorie deficit. That means, either decreasing what goes in or increasing her expenditure through exercise. To be honest, unless you're feeding her thousands of treats a day, then your main focus should be on her meal times. Decrease that by what seems a reasonable amount and see what happens. Have you tried using kibble for training treats? If she's OK with that, then you can just weigh out her daily allowance and take her training treats from that. Easy peasy. Otherwise, maybe try something like turkey frankfurters, which are really cheap and low in calories. I get the chubby ones, which I slice into four lengthways and then slice into tiny morsels about a millimetre thick. They work out at around a calorie a treat, which is far lower than most commercial treats. It sounds like you're a little muddled between "healthy" and "weight loss". In order to lose weight, you can eat complete trash if you want, as long as you're eating in a deficit. Conversely, I could eat the healthiest food in the world and gain weight, if I eat enough of it. TL;DR: Decrease the amount of food she is eating in total, and ignore the minutae
Hi Snowbunny Wooow thanks for that Yes I know about decreasing her food have done for last month and has only gained 0.3,0.3, 0.4, 0.3 kilo over last 4 weeks having Increased her exercise a little so must be working She will eat her kibble as training treats but sometimes find she bored with it or won't do things quite as quick or good if that kinda makes sense. But if you bring out as you say chicken ,liver, sausages then she's a wee star. So If I weigh one of those fish skins I could work out how many cals are in 1 small square ???? So what are good low fat kcal treats for training then Cheers x
I weighd 1 small fish skin treat it weighs roughly 3/4 gram so does that mean it contains 27/36 grm fat per treat ??? Am maybe way on different wave length here
Ignore the amount of fat, that's irrelevant. People get so hung up on fat. Dietary fat is not the same as body fat; in fact, eating dietary fat can help you lose body fat. Products marketed as "low fat" are the work of the devil, both for ourselves and our animals. Weighing one fish skin is probably too open to margins of error. Weigh ten of them, then divide that number by ten to get the average weight of one skin. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it weighs a gram. 13.5% of that is crude fat, 30% is crude protein. So, that would be: 13.5% x 1g x 9 calories = 1.2 calories from fat (there are 9 calories per gram of fat) 30% x 1g x 4 calories = 1.2 calories from protein (there are 4 calories per gram of protein) Obviously, we're missing 56.5% of the rest of the ingredients; let's assume they're carbohydrate: 56.5% x 1g x 4 calories = 2.26 calories from carbohydrate (there are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate) Which means each treat is about 4.46 calories. Which isn't a lot, but is a lot more than, as I suggested, the turkey frankfurters that I cut down to 1-calorie pieces. I can give four and a half times more training treats then you for the same caloric value. Now, I don't know how big your fish treats are, or if they can be cut down, but just keep in mind, it's not really the composition of the treat that's the issue, it's the caloric value and how many you're giving. You're not giving them to her as "food", you're doing it for training. They only need to be tiny (about the size of a pea) and just give her a flavour, so she wants to work for more.
Anyway, I think we're getting into semantics here. Weigh out her food. Weigh out her training treats. That is her whole allowance for the day. If she starts looking better, you have the right amount of both. If she continues to look chubby, reduce either her food, her treats or both. Tada, job done
I use ZiWiPeak as his every day treat - he doesn't get this to eat at meals, he get a (much cheaper!) kibble....
Mine get turkey frankfurters, cheap cheese (Emmental) cut into tiny pieces and mini breadsticks broken into quarters as their everyday treats. I sometimes bake treats for them - liver cake, or dehydrated liver, and banana and peanut butter cake cut into tiny bits. But I find those a bit too crumby for my treat bag. If we've had prawns (which we do a lot), I dehydrate the heads and use those as high value treats, and my jackpot is usually a piece of dried tripe (yummy). I also sometimes blitz sardines and use those in a baby pouch to feed. In the winter, a friend of us runs a restaurant here and they get the trimmings from the beef fillets, which I cut up small. They are very spoilt
I'm a recent convert to homemade liver cake. Molly is mad on it and it's cheaper than shop-bought treats. I freeze it in small batches.
I use the dried fish skin cubes for Hattie as she considers those high value, I also use cheap cheese, sausage, dried liver pieces etc. cut up into small pieces but I do deduct these from their daily rations. Charlie is not so food orientated but a tube of Primula 'cheese' (Heidrun's brilliant suggestion ) is his favourite, but of course in tiny, tiny squirts. xx
Great treat everyone Have only made liver cake once for Ziva so mite just be doing it again. Cheese is also great idea cause its nice and smelly she will love it .
